Malta passes law to ban normalisation surgery on intersex infants

"Malta’s parliament just passed new legislation that allows self-determination of gender (with a simple process to legally change gender), and outlaws unnecessary surgery on intersex babies. This bill makes Malta the first country to ban unnecessary surgery on intersex infants.

In 2013, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture announced it condemns unnecessary surgery on intersex babies. “The Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to repeal any law allowing intrusive and irreversible treatments,” the UN statement reads, “including forced genital-normalizing surgery, involuntary sterilization, unethical experimentation, medical display, ‘reparative therapies’ or ‘conversion therapies,’ when enforced or administered without the free and informed consent of the person concerned.”

Maltese officials and medical professionals are now working to come up with guidelines to make sure all surgeries done on infants are medically necessary and not “driven by social factors without the consent of the minor.”